


A New Start

by noumenon



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alcohol, College AU, Fantasy, M/M, Sci-Fi, super powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-03-15 09:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3441695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noumenon/pseuds/noumenon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Space college! Super powers! </p><p>Everyone has a power and is enrolled in a college that flying them through space to a new planet to inhabit. These educated eccentric people are expected to rebuilt humankind, but better. Yeah. Like that's gonna work.</p><p>So, since people liked my story <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2769311">The Best Thing</a> I decided, why not expand the universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

From the surface of the planet the ship looked like it could be another moon. A small moon, sure, but it the fact that it was visibly there instead of a blinking light was a pretty big deal for something manmade. It was so much bigger than anything Tucker had been on in his lifetime. Of course it had to be, it had to be able to sustain life for a pretty long time. 

Through the window of the shuttle that was currently taking Tucker to what would soon become his home. It was a huge disk. Of course, he already knew that. But up close and personal, it looked so much bigger. He could see the details from here, instead of just a huge circle. The screws and panels and the small windows so combat cabin fever. Although, once they got out into space there wouldn’t be all that much to see. Just black sky, stars, the occasional planet if they were at the right angle to even see it.

The center was stationary and held a port for the space craft to connect to. It was awkward trying to get off the ship in zero gravity. There were other students on the ship trying to get out at the same time, and Tucker just got taken along with the crowd. The group was moved along by workers who floated through the space so easily. They must have been here for a while.

“Everyone, please follow the yellow ropes on the walls to your destination. You’ll make your way into an elevator that will take you to the outer rings of the ship.” A guide tied to her post next to the bussing shuttle yelled to all those entering. 

Tucker was glad he had some experience in zero-g. His dad was the counselor under the director of this and other projects. He was always busy with work so he used to take Tucker on trips to his office which often included going off-planet. Some of the others around him weren’t so fortunate. One boy a few feet in front of him got pushed by the girl next to him and started spinning off into the air while spewing curses until a guide helped him back into place. The girl was laughing hysterically. They were in the elevator group before Tucker, which he was pretty thankful for. He wasn’t in the mood to be in close quarters with an asshole and a bitch, even if they were pretty hot. 

It took a while for each group to get to the other floor. The elevator seemed to work by waiting to get filled, then waiting to get caught by the next ring’s spin before shifting levels. When Tucker finally got to go into the elevator, he found himself pushed up against a corner by a blonde boy. He instantly felt nervous to the point of nausea the second their skin touched.

“Sorry!” The boy said quickly as he pushed himself back to give Tucker room. “You felt that, right?” He asked when Tucker didn’t seem to get what he was apologizing for. “I’m pretty nervous.” He laughed awkwardly. “And uh, my thing is I can push my emotions onto other people. I don’t always mean to, it just kinda happens.” He looked down at the ground, or more accurately what was designated as the ground despite the lack of any gravitation force to actually pull you down. 

“Oh shit, that’s cool.” Tucker said. He definitely felt bad about his own ‘gift’. Having glowing sigils on his skin didn’t really make him count as an apex. He only got here because of his dad’s connections. “But it’d also be cool if you didn’t do that to me.”

“I’ll try not to, but y’know it’s not always bad. I could make you feel pretty good.” He said with a grin. Was that a pick-up line? Tucker wasn’t sure so he decided to let it go for now. “Oh my gosh, where are my manners?” The boy shifted gears from perky to apologetic so fast it was like whiplash. “My name’s Franklin Donut! It’s a pleasure to meet you.” And he was right back to perky. 

“I’m Tucker. Lavernius Tucker.” He wasn’t sure if he should hold his hand out or not. Tucker didn’t really want any more emotions shoved on hm. “I’m in the primary ward. What about you?”

“That’s so crazy, I’m in there too!” Donut jumped a bit in his spot in excitement. “Looks like we’re going to be sleeping together.”

Okay, he has to be doing this on purpose. Tucker couldn’t even say ‘bow chicka bow wow’ to that because it was way too obvious to be funny. And Tucker is not that easy. Okay, maybe he is. “Bow chicka bow wow.” 

“Hm?” Donut tilted his head and furrowed his eyebrows. “I don’t get it.”

Alright, so he wasn’t doing it on purpose. “Ah, it’s nothing.” Tucker shrugged it off. He was about to continue talking, but the elevator suddenly started moving, prompting Tucker to grab onto the wall before he was displaced to the top. He will never take gravity for granted after this. 

Everyone was grabbing something or putting their hands on the ceiling to prevent themselves from moving around too much. Luckily the crowded room was helping to stop anyone from turning sideways as they moved. 

Soon, the elevator connected to the first of the rings. Everyone inside was slammed down and to the side of the room as the artificial gravity began. It wasn’t really gravity, it was just physics. The rings were spinning so that centripetal force would mimic gravity. Of course, suddenly being spun was not fun. 

The students started shoving against each other to get back to their feet. Again, Tucker was in contact with Donut and his anxiety was seeping into him. 

“Sorry!” Donut said quickly, grabbing the railing on the side of the wall to pull himself up and away from other people. Tucker just put his hands up and dropped a “It’s all right” before balancing himself.

“Alright students.” The guide for their group started to speak. “Your things have already been delivered to your dorm rooms. You were all given your dorm assignments and should have the passcodes to your door. If you do not know it, you will need to wait for your Residential Advisor to find their room to help you. The doors will open shortly, and then you can follow the maps to your ring and dorm room. If you get lost, ask a guide in yellow.” He motioned to his bright shirt as he said this. “We can direct you to where you belong.”

“Let’s go!” Donut said as soon as the door opened. He grabbed onto Tucker’s sleeve to avoid any accidental emotion sharing again and practically pulled him out of the elevator. At least Tucker wasn’t going to have to worry about making friends here.

“It looks like we are on the second ring.” Donut said, looking at a map over the shoulders of other students all trying to get the same look. “And the stairs are….”

“Over there.” Tucker pointed down the hall. “And be careful, gravity increases as we go down so don’t like, fall on your ass or something because you feel heavier.”

It didn’t take too long to find their dorm rooms. Luckily, they were pretty close to where the elevators had dropped them off. Tucker was so glad he didn’t have to walk to the other side of this huge ship just to lay down. Donut’s door was one of the first, so they parted ways, but not until Donut promised they’d “hook up” and share schedules.

Most of the doors had notes still taped to them, indicating that no one had gotten in there yet. But Tucker’s door, that one was open. And from where he was standing he could hear someone yelling, wait no, two someones. One of the someones walked out the room, a hot blonde girl. 

Wait, that’s the girl who shoved her friend off the rail on the way inside. 

Oh god, that must mean-

The black haired boy who Tucker had seen nearly float away after getting on the ship popped his head out of the door to call the girl a “bitch” one last time before she left. She went past Tucker and he was so glad that at least she wasn’t going to be rooming with them. He could only handle one asshole.

Speaking of asshole,

“Hey. You must be my roommate.” Tucker waved to the guy standing in his room. “I saw you earlier actually, you’re the guy who sucks in zero-g.”

Okay, maybe pissing his roommate off first thing wasn’t the best idea he’s ever had, but it was fun. Plus, if they were going to hate each other, might as well get it over with already, right? His roommate threw his phone at Tucker.

Yeah. This is going to be an interesting couple of years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never written sci-fi, but I'm trying to learn so uh, help is appreciated!
> 
> I would also like it to be known that I have no idea where this is going so if you want something to happen, tell me in the comments. This will be a reader-influenced story! Yay, woo.  
> I have enough ideas to get started, and I have some endgame relationships and whatnot, but yah tell me what to do.
> 
> Constructive criticism please! I'm building up a much longer story but I want to kind of test some things out with this before I start posting my huge as fuck project in a month or two.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this is what I titled my story
> 
>    
> y'know what spaceships have license plates and this is the college ship's license plate it's canon

Tucker rubbed his shoulder on the spot where his roommate’s phone hit. “Okay, so I may have deserved that.” He mumbled. Even though the mark was under his shirt, Tucker was pretty sure that it was red and was probably going to bruise. 

“You fuckin’ think?” His roommate snapped back angrily. “Now give me my phone.” He had on hand in his pocket and one hand outstretched. God, what a tool.

“You threw it at me! Jesus Christ, you can’t just throw shit and then be mad that you don’t have it anymore.” Tucker argued, almost yelled, but anything was a fucking whisper compared to this guy’s voice. 

“Clearly I can.” Well, he wasn’t wrong. 

“You’re an asshole and if you want your phone you’re going to have to get it yourself.” Tucker told him as he pushed his way into the room, leaving the phone on the ground where it landed after bouncing off of Tucker. He wondered if there was a way he could get a different roommate or if he was stuck. This ship is planned to be in space for at least five years, so surely they can move around, right? Being stuck with one person for five years would not be fun if they couldn’t get along. 

Then again, this was still school, and school always tried to make him solve his own problems before they did shit to help. He could at least introduce himself. “I’m Tucker.” He said with an outstretched hand.

“Hey, Fucker.” His roommate ignored the hand and he instead left the dorm to retrieve his phone. It looked like it didn’t have any damage done to it by the fall, which Tucker was only happy about because that was one less thing for this guy to bitch about. 

“Do you seriously have to be such an asshole? What’s your name, dick?” Tucker asked him. He was starting to get angry now and he really wasn’t sure how much longer he could make vague attempts at being civil. He had to at least hold off until the ship left the space dock, then nobody could be sent back to the dying Earth.

“Leonard Church Jr. Just call me Church though. I don’t like my dad’s stupid fucking name.”

“What if I call you Junior?”

“Then I get to punch you.”

“Fine. Church.”

Church looked at him with a bored expression before sticking his hand out to shake with his roommate for the rest of the foreseeable future. “Good to meet you, I guess.”

 

Judging from the sounds in the hallway Tucker could assume that the rest of the hall was finding their way into their dorms and meeting their roommates. He really hoped some of them wouldn’t be as big of assholes as his own roommate was. 

Church didn’t do all that much unpacking. Or rather, he didn’t do much organizing after dumping things onto his bed and into drawers. The only aspect of his side of the room that was at all organized was his desk, covered in tech that Tucker hadn’t seen before, which was saying something considering his dad’s line of work. There were two smart phones, or what looked like phones, two tablets and two laptops all placed around a single large desktop computer. Nobody could ever need that much technology. And no student could need a desktop that big. Desktops were only ever used for incredibly high tech things that laptops couldn’t even handle despite all of the increases in technology. 

Every piece of tech that Church owned whirled to life at the same time, starting up much faster than Tucker’s own computers ever did. He sat down at his desk and glanced between the screens. Each one opened itself to something different and it was about then that Tucker realized that this was probably what made Church an apex.

“Is that your thing?” He asked, still staring at the computer screens that seemed to be working themselves. 

“Huh?” Church turned and instantly the computers stopped what they were doing. 

“I mean, are you doing that?” Tucker gestured to the screens. “That your power? Doing computery things?”

“Computery things?” Church scoffed. “That makes it sound so simple. My thoughts are made of numbers, all right? Tech is part of me, I can control all of it. Fuckin’ computery things.”

“Jeez, okay.” Tucker put his hands in the air. “I surrender, sorry for offending your delicate ego, bro.”

“Go fuck yourself before I give you a computer virus.” Church flipped him off and turned his attention back to his computers. Tucker could see Church’s eyes reflected on the shining screen of his laptop and he was pretty sure that the codes were reflected in his eyes the same way. 

This guy was not at all what Tucker imagined a computer nerd to be. He decided to just leave it be for now and work on cleaning his own section. Well, not really clean, just sort of organize it in his own way. He shoved all of his clothes into drawers. He might sort them by type later in the years here. Books were dropped on the desk, his bed got made, and everything else he didn’t need at the moment was shoved under the bed to deal with later. 

The only thing Tucker actually cared about was his guitar, which he took out and restrung carefully. He had pulled out all of the strings to make sure no pressure changes during transport would snap the neck. Now it was time to get it ready to play again. 

Church didn’t seem to care at all what Tucker was doing, he was too entranced by his own work, but someone else from the hall did end up knocking on the door because of it. 

Tucker put his guitar away. It was in tune now, he was just plucking strings for the heck of it. He answered the door for an annoyed looking freckled blonde boy. He’s cute.

“Uh, hey.” Tucker forced himself to speak up to the cute guy. “Can I… help you?”

“I’m David Washington.” He stuck out his hand to shake, “But most people call me Washington, or Wash.” David – no, Washington, told him. 

“My name’s Tucker.” Tucker grinned and shook his hand. At least someone in the hall wasn’t going to be a complete asshole. 

“I’m the RA of the primary ward.” He sounded way too serious “I’m going around alerting everyone that there’s going to be a hall meeting in fifteen minutes. Finish up whatever you’re doing inside your dorm, and then sit outside your door.” Okay, definitely too serious to be cute like Tucker had originally believed him to be. No big loss, there were probably plenty of hot girls around the ship for Tucker to flirt with.

Tucker went back into his room and made sure Church knew about the hall meeting coming up. His screen was stopped now, and he seemed way more frustrated than he was when he was dealing with Tucker. Apparently having control over computers didn’t necessarily mean he understood everything about coding. He avoided mocking his roommate, he still didn’t want Church to ruin his laptop or his phone. Despite being off planet, he did still need that. The ship still had internet from satellites dotted throughout space all the way to the colony they were heading to, so students just switched from carrier based texting to internet based texting to contact each other on the ship or family back on Earth.

The two waited out the time separately. Church stared at his coding and mumbled about his code under his breath and Tucker decided to organize his shit a little bit more. The clock on the wall told him that it was time to go outside, so he did.

David Washington was already standing outside his door, one of the yellow ones. Tucker thought that was so stupid. The primary ward was fucking primary colors. It sounded so much cooler before they got here.

“Everyone is here, right?” The blonde said slowly, looking over the people standing by their colored doors. “Wait, where’s your roommate?” He pointed to the boy by one of the red doors. 

“He’s sleeping.” The boy told him, sounding very bored.

“Why is your roommate sleeping? We just got here!” Washington was almost yelling this. He definitely was not prepared for things to go wrong in the literal first minute of his job as RA. Tucker couldn’t help himself from finding it hilarious. If the rest of the hall was going to be awful, he was pretty sure he could get this guy to rip his own hair out. 

The boy by the red door shrugged. “He was being really pissy about my half of the room being a mess, so I put him to sleep. Problem solved. My problem is solved at least, I don’t give a fuck about his.”

Washington frowned and pushed a breath through flared nostrils before trying to regain his composure. “So your gift is relaxation? You must be Dexter Grif.”

“Yup.” Grif smirked. “Guilty as charged.”

“You will refrain from using your gift on your roommate in the future.” Wash told him. “And, if you’re able, wake him up right now.”

“Sorry, not in my job description. He’s just asleep. He’ll wake up on his own.” 

“God fucking dammit…” Wash groaned and pushed past Grif into the dorm room. A few moments later he came out with Grif’s roommate who looked like he must have been sleeping very nicely before being dragged out.

“Okay, now everyone is out. Let’s all introduce ourselves like civilized adults with our names, age, majors, and anything else you feel is important.” Wash told everyone. “As I told you all previously, my name is David Washington. I’m 24, I’m a graduate student studying history with a concentration in – ”

“This is boring!” Grif interrupted. 

“Shut the fuck up.” His roommate shoved him, which wasn’t very affective given Grif’s size.

“Hey man, I don’t want to sit here and listen to all this. It’s boring. I want to go find the kitchen.” Grif shrugged. “Who’s with me?”

Tucker glanced between Grif and Washington, trying to decide who to side with. Grif seemed way more fun, but Wash seemed like the better choice of person to be friends with. Then again, he also looked like he’d look funny pissed off. “Hell yeah dude. Fuck authority.” He grinned as Washington seethed. 

“Could you two just stop for five minutes,” Wash tried to interject.

“I think that sounds like fun!” Donut jumped into the conversation. Tucker still wasn’t sure what way to take anything that boy was saying. 

“I want to help if it is fun!” Donut’s roommate added. “What are we doing?”

“You’re listening to our residential advisor!” Wash yelled over them.

“I don’t think that yelling is really necessary.” A boy in front of a purple door spoke up. “Can’t we all just sit down and talk about our feelings?”

“I have some things for you to feel.” There was only one girl in their hall, and Tucker made a mental note to thank whatever deity he can think of for putting her dorm right next to his.

“Sis! Don’t talk like that to random assholes! Or, to anybody for that matter!” Grif yelled. 

“All of you, stop talking.” Wash stomped on the floor. He was fuming. His face was bright red and Tucker couldn’t believe how easy it was to rile this guy up. “We are in the middle of a hall meeting.”

“Yeah no shit, the hall is meeting each other.” Tucker grinned as chaos continued going down around him in the form of swear words.

“Fine!” The RA hissed. “Do what you want. Just don’t complain to me if you don’t like your roommate, because that was going to be addressed during this meeting.”

Well, Tucker fucked up.

Washington went back into his dorm and closed the door. In the hall, Grif started laughing hysterically. “Oh my god, the look on that guys face! He is gonna quit this job so fucking fast.” 

“That wasn’t very nice of you.” Donut spoke up from his door with his hands on his hips. “He was just trying to do his job.”

“Yeah, and I’m being nice by making it so he doesn’t have to do it.” Grif told him.

“God, you’re the worst.” Grif’s roommate pushed him again.

“Oh can it, Simmons.” Grif pushed him back, making the much thinner boy stumble back. “If anyone needs me, I’m going to get acquainted with the kitchen on this ship.”

“I thought that we were not allowed in there without special permission.” Donut’s roommate spoke up again. 

“Culinary arts major, bitches. I got special permission.” Grif proceeded to flip everyone off before walking away down the hall.

“I can’t believe I’m stuck with him.” Simmons grumbled. 

“It won’t be that bad!” Donut was way too cheery in the face of all this negativity. It just wasn’t natural. “I’m sure we’ll all end up closer than we ever imagined possible after spending a few nights together.” 

“What the fuck are you babbling about?” Church asked sounding just as angry as he did with Tucker earlier. At least that made Tucker feel a little bit better. Maybe this guy is just this angry with everyone he meets and didn’t have anything personally against Tucker. 

“Were you not paying attention to any of the shit that just happened?” Tucker asked him.

Church held up the phone in his hand that must have been occupying his attention. He wasn’t looking at it before, then again, he didn’t actually have to look at it, did he? “Of course not.”

“Well, we pissed off the RA and the fat one is named Grif.” Tucker said. 

“Wow. I’m so glad I left my desk for that.” Church said sarcastically. He looked around the hall and decided there was nothing more to do so he just went back inside. “Tell me if anything important happens.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Tucker rolled his eyes.

Simmons retreated back into his room mumbling something about having to clean up Grif’s mess. Donut and his roommate went back inside too. Tucker was pretty sure he heard Donut call him “Caboose” before the door shut, but he wasn’t positive on that one. That was a pretty fucking stupid name. 

Tucker’s own door had already shut behind Church and he was left contemplating what he should do. On one hand, he could just go back inside and deal with his roommate. Or he could talk to the RA, who may or may not be in a worse mood than Church. 

Well, if the RA is in a worse mood, Tucker can always walk out. So, he decided to take that chance and knocked on Washington’s door.

There was a moment of silence, then shuffling from within. The door slid open seconds later with a very annoyed looking David Washington staring down at Tucker. “What do you want?”

“Hey so uh, what’s the stuff about changing roommates?” Tucker asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. 

Washington’s gaze didn’t change. “I told you, if you wanted to know about that then you shouldn’t have interrupted me.”

“Well,” Tucker began, trying to think of anything to not piss this guy off, “You can tell me now. I won’t interrupt again.”

Wash blinked a few times at that and his eyes softened. He must have believed Tucker, which was definitely good. “Oh. Well, there’s some paperwork for it that I have. Most of the halls have empty dorms because there’s a lower number of students than anticipated. But you need to live with your current roommate for at least sixteen days before moving into a room alone unless you have a special need.”

“Sixteen days? That’s almost two weeks!” Tucker complained. “Why the fuck do I have to wait so long to ditch this asshole?”

“Community is an important part of this ship’s mission. Isolationism is not encouraged in the students.” Wash explained. “It won’t be that bad, okay? There’s a couple lounges on each floor, so you can go there in between classes if you need to minimize how often you see your roommate. Leonard Church right? He’s your roommate?”

“Yeah. The fucking asshole.” Tucker crossed his arms and glanced over his shoulder at his own door. “I guess I can handle him for a little while. But you better expect that I’m going to complain about him to you until I get to move.”

“That’s a lie.” Wash almost smiled as he said that. Tucker wondered if that was close to a smile as he could get.

“What the hell? Man, you don’t believe me, do you?” Tucker uncrossed his arms and balled his fists by his side. He was lying, but this guy shouldn’t just know that. “If I’m gonna be miserable, I’m gonna take everyone else down with me.” Or at least Church. Yeah, he was definitely going to make Church miserable.

“You’re ridiculous.” This time, Wash actually did smile. “Go back to your dorm and finish unpacking all of your things. The ship will leave port later tonight, during dinner. I suggest staying out of trouble until then. As long we’re in port, you can still be grounded.”

“Yeah, yeah, all right.” Tucker grumbled. “See you at dinner or whatever.” He turned and left back to his own room, where Church was again absorbed in his coding attempts. He only hoped that this wouldn’t turn out as horribly as it seemed like it would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been pretty busy recently, or really, always busy. last weekend I went to a writing conference that gave me lots of inspiration so I've putting that towards a lot of projects all week and I'm hoping to work out a writing schedule for myself so I don't let myself go so long without writing.
> 
> as always, comments are lovely, if you have any ideas go ahead, I still don't really know all that much about what's gonna happen plotwise except that all of my ships will be on this ship. space ship shipping ships to a new planet.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some more introduction stuff, after this chapter the actual plot that I want to do can start (woo)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've been kind of gone for the entire summer. I was really hoping I'd have time to write but I worked too much and in my free time I was too tired to write. But on the plus side, I made enough money that I don't have to worry about working during the school year.
> 
> What that means for you is I am now free! So I plan on getting a lot more content up. I've said this before, but the difference is now I actually have multiple chapters of stories and this story that I haven't uploaded yet to ensure that I actually CAN consistently upload more work. (I also have a writing blog over at prisoner619b.tumblr.com for drabbles that don't make it to ao3)
> 
> And last, I'd like to apologize for this being so short. It was a lot longer until the file got corrupted and I had to start over and I'm angry re-doer so I condensed a lot.

Wash sunk into his cot once Tucker left his doorway. Today had been nothing but terrible. As much as he wanted to blame it all on the students in his hall, he knew he couldn’t really argue that he didn’t lose his cool too easily. He knew going into this job that there was a chance that the students would be bad, but he didn’t adequately prepare himself for these people. That was his own fault.

The formal introductions had failed miserably. He considered the possibility of trying it again at dinner in a few hours. Washington had been given instructions by the director of the school that he had to follow, and one of those instructions was to control his hall and have them associate with each other. They were meant to build a community together, they had to at the very least get along. And he couldn’t lie about having done it. Wash never really learned the subtleties of lying since to him there were none. One of the downsides to just knowing when people are lying. He was never able to learn what a good lie was. 

It was especially embarrassing seeing as he wasn’t even given a large hall to be in charge of. There were only ten students, including Washington. Most of the halls had at least twenty. He had just been randomly selected to get one of the underpopulated ones and he was still managing to mess it up. 

At least Tucker seemed to be alright. Maybe, Wash still wasn’t completely sure about him. He was willing to let himself be hopeful though, and he hoped Tucker wouldn’t make his job too hard. 

Right now, Washington decided to set his attention towards dinner in a few hours. For the first night, they were sitting at tables with their halls, so that will be another chance to get everyone to calm down and talk civilly. Food tended to help with quieting down college students, so it should be an easy time to get things sorted. 

Before he could go back to unpacking and organizing his own things, his door was knocked on again. 

“Yes, hello. What do you need?” Wash asked after opening the door to see Simmons standing there looking a bit nervous.

“I uh, what’s the deal with switching roommates?” He asked.

Washington sighed. “If in sixteen days you still hate your roommate, you can ask for a change. Until then, try to get along.”

“I can’t see things possibly working!” Simmons pressed. “Aren’t there empty rooms in this hall?”

“Yes and no. One boy doesn’t have a roommate, but he requested it to be that way. Other rooms that aren’t occupied, they’re being used for storage. We’re going to be on this ship for a long time, we have a lot of things stored.” Wash told him. “Just, try to get along, okay? You don’t have to spend all your time in the room. There are numerous lounges on each floor for you to choose from. And,” Wash noted Simmons’ open door leading to an empty dorm room, “Your roommate doesn’t seem to be here now anyways. Just relax and unpack for now, okay?”

Simmons sighed in defeat. “I guess you’re right. But I will be back if he does anything else!” He said before he turned and left to his room. True. Dammit.

Washington’s door shut and a few minutes passed without another knock demanding his attention. He sighed in relief and began to work on his own room. He knew if he didn’t do it now, it would never end up getting done.

Eventually the time for dinner came and the hall was able to meet up in the cafeteria. The table was filled up with all of the same faces from before, as well as one more that Washington hadn’t even noticed not having come out of his room during the first attempt at introductions. It made sense, he supposed. He did get fed up with it before checking to see if everyone was even outside. Not his proudest moment. 

That was in the past though, so Wash decided to just keep moving forward. 

There was a sudden shift in the ship and everyone grabbed hold of the table. A few shouts of surprise and a low rumble of murmurs covered the room for a few seconds before everyone settled.

“We’re leaving Earth’s orbit.” Tucker said. He was the only one at the table who didn’t even react to the ships movement. Wash wondered if he spent a lot of time on ships growing up.

“Good riddance. Earth is lame.” Grif said.

“How can you say that?” Simmons stared at him. “Earth was our home!”

Grif rolled his eyes and put his hand on Simmons’ shoulder. “You need to relax.” As he said it, Simmons’ face changed from annoyed to calm. 

“Grif!” Wash yelled. Grif pulled his hand away and Simmons went right back to be annoyed. “You can’t use your power on your roommate.”

“God you’re a dick.” Simmons grumbled, scooting a bit away from him. “Don’t you fucking dare do that to me again.”

“Or what?” Grif taunted. “You’ll look into your crystal ball and tell me my future?”

“That’s not how being clairvoyance works, idiot!” Simmons snapped at him. “I see things and I feel things about the future, it’s not magic it’s my power.”

Kai decided to join in the conversation at this point, “So, sometime in the future do you wanna feel what you see?” She winked at Simmons from across the table and grabbed her breasts for show. 

Grif’s face turned red and he turned and shoved Simmons. “Don’t you dare hit on my sister!”

“She was hitting on me!” Simmons shoved him back.

“Both of you, stop it!” Wash yelled and slammed his hand down on the table. The arguing parties stopped instantly.

“Jeez, you don’t have to yell.” Grif said.

“I think that was a perfectly acceptable situation to yell.” Simmons argued. 

“Both of you just shut up.” This time it was Tucker speaking up.

“You are such a kissass.” Grif said to Simmons. 

“Mirando hacia atrás, creo que hubiera preferido morir en la tierra por tener que estar cerca de todos vosotros.” This was the student hadn’t even bothered to leave his room before. Wash had no idea what he was saying. The table seemed to ignore his statement, so they likely didn’t understand him either. 

“All of you, stop bickering and be quiet for a few minutes. We’ll get called up to eat in a few minutes.” Wash told them. Grif opened his mouth to complain, but luckily for Wash’s sanity one of the kitchen workers stood up at the front of the cafeteria and announced which tables could start going for their food.

“See,” Wash said, “You’ll get food in a minute, and then we can all relax and get to know each other.” 

“I know who I want to get to know.” Tucker winked at Kai, who giggled back.

“Don’t you start hitting on her, too!” Grif yelled.

“I’m allowed to flirt with people, Dex.” She told him.

“And technically, relationships are supposed to happen.” Tucker added. “I mean, we’re meant to populate a whole planet with special little babies.”

“I will murder you, asshat.” Grif warned.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Doc raised his hands up. “Let’s not throw around words that we can’t take back.”

“It’s okay, I didn’t plan on taking back those words.” Grif said.

“Please, five minutes. Would you calm down for five minutes?” Wash pleaded with the group. “Tucker, don’t hit on Kai in front of Grif. Grif, stop threatening people on your sister’s behalf.”

Tucker glanced between Wash and Grif and huffed angrily. “Oh fine. For you, blondie.” It was an odd touch that the statement was true, he was doing it for Wash’s sake. However small as it may be, it was a nice feeling that at least one of his students had a small amount of respect for him. 

Finally the time came for their table to get up and get their own food. There was less arguing as they all ate their food, except when Grif started taking fries from anyone who was close enough for him to reach. Still, it didn’t spark any more yelling so Wash was thankful for that.

Once everyone was finished eating and students began chatting amongst themselves another staff member stood up at the front of the cafeteria, announcing that tomorrow all of the departments would have open houses so the students could explore where they would spending a lot of their time before the first day of classes start. 

Everyone was dismissed. Table after table stood up and walked to the door. Most of the groups stayed vaguely together, but as Wash tried to usher his students back to their own hall he couldn’t help but notice Tucker was completely missing. He looked around and spotted him – Tucker was hanging back and looking around. Once there was an opening, he slipped out of the mass of people and went a completely different direction. 

Wash figured he must know what he’s doing, but he also knew it couldn’t be something he’s allowed to do. 

It wasn’t like he could get anywhere restricted. Passcodes and student passports were needed for most places, and always needed when authorization was an issue.

He couldn’t possibly do anything terrible, Wash rationalized and turned his attention back to the students that were with him. Some of them were merging with the growing crowd, but the way back to their hall wasn’t exactly difficult to figure out. So he decided to trust them. What’s the worst that they could do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, thanks for not giving up on this story, and again if you want more stuff I've written or to send me prompts, head on over to prisoner619b.tumblr.com


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I deserve an award for updating in a timely matter for the first time ever. Some sort of "adequate at time management" award. 
> 
> this chapter is just Tucker making contacts around the ship, introducing a few more important characters. also, schools are really big! so not every character who does things is actually from rvb, some will be OCs some will be shamelessly stolen from other series.

Living in space was nothing like living on Earth. Well, Tucker mused, that might be entire true. Maybe living in Alaska was similar since they had seasons where they never got the sun. 

Those assholes in Alaska still got some sunlight during the year, though. That was a hell of a lot better than what they got here. 

Every dorm had a fake window. It was just a square light panel attached to the wall with some lines on it so it looked like a window. It even had curtains. The light was synced to the clocks to change intensity throughout the day.

While this wasn’t the first time in Tucker’s life that he was awoken not by sunlight coming through his window, but by artificial light on a 24 hour cycle, the thought that he would never be woken up by the same sun stung.

It was awful. Tucker hated it. He really, really hated it. 

There was still another two days before classes started. The scrolling digital clocks on the walls read the time and date, stating the day as Saturday. They hadn’t been in space long enough to lose track of Earth days, but Tucker wasn’t typically good at keeping track of the days there either. Right now, he didn’t need it. He wasn’t going to forget the first day of his life away from Earth.

Today was a good day to explore. He had to ditch Wash first. Apparently he had noticed when Tucker snuck off the night before and wanted to make sure he wasn’t doing that again. Tucker didn’t comment on where he had gone, but he went ahead and told Wash where he was going. Students were actually supposed to be exploring, after all. Sure, he had time before that officially started, but he wanted to go now. He already had theoretical knowledge of the ship. He’d seen the blueprints, but he never got to actually explore in person until he got on board. Now he could anywhere and find out where his classes where going to be once those started. That was an excuse really, he just wanted to check out the English Department. He’d explore his actual department later in the day.

Tucker’s father had insisted that he major in Political Science if he got on this ship, so that’s his major. His minor though, that could be anything, and he picked English Creative Writing with his concentration being in poetry. Girls totally dug poets. That wasn’t the only reason he picked it, though. 

He made it to the English lounge. There was a lock on the door that required a swipe from their student ID to get in. Despite the school being about togetherness and community, the department lounges were still segregated to just those in the department. Minors count though, so the door unlocked. Inside there were a few other students who decided to check out their lounge. One was already looking inside the closet full of wine and liquor, which were considered necessary course materials for English studies. 

“Hey!” One of the girls in the group called out to Tucker. “You in the English department?”

“I got in here, didn’t I?” Tucker responded with a grin. “I’m creative writing, poetry.”

“Oh, nice!” She said. “Are you interested in doing open mic nights?”

“We haven’t even found out if we can do that or not.” The short boy standing next to her said. 

“Uh, we’re going to do it no matter what. We have a lounge and open mics are like, a requirement for English majors. So we’re going to do it! We’ll get snacks, we have booze, all we need is some live music and we could charge other majors for entrance.”

“I play guitar.” Tucker offered up.

“Fucking perfect! Gabby, you brought your drums, right?”

The boy looking through the closet looked up. “Huh? Yeah. I haven’t put ‘em together or anythin’ though.”

“That’s the beginning of a basic band, not bad, right?” The girl grinned. “Oh crap, I don’t even know your name. I’m Olivia. That’s Gabe, and the tiny baby is Fran.” 

“I’m not even that small.” Fran argued. He was almost as tall as her, which was still pretty tall seeing as she was way taller than Tucker was already. She had to have been at least six feet tall.

“You’re a small little cinnamon bun, hush.” She put her hand over his face to silence him. “And you’re not even an English major so shut up.”

Fran knocked her hand away. “Yeah, I’m culinary arts and the only person you know who’s willing to bring food to your event.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever Franny.” She turned back to Tucker, “Hey, I never asked your name.”

“Names Tucker, but you can call me,” He smirked and pulled out his phone, “Anytime you like.”

Olivia stared at him for half a second before doubling over and laughing, “Oh my god you’re so bad at flirting!”

“What?” Tucker shoved his phone back in his pocket. “That was such a great line!”

“No, it wasn’t. Plus I don’t really have room for third boyfriend, sorry.”

“Wait, what?”

“Gabby and Franny are my boys.” She grabbed the back of Gabe’s shirt and pulled him over the group so she could her arms around both him and Fran.

“Shit girl, I wish I had two boyfriend – I mean, girlfriends, definitely girlfriends.”

Gabe laughed at that, which a little creepy. When he laughed he looked like a serial killer who just got his way. His height didn’t help with the murder look. He was even taller than Olivia and was built like a tank. “Two boyfriends, two girlfriends. What’s that shit matter? I got one of each. Being bi is awesome.”

“Yeah it is.” Olivia agreed. “Need another chick up in here, though.”

“Oh. I just kinda thought,” Tucker began to justify himself until he was cut off.

“You thought I was what, double straight cause I got two boyfriends?” Olivia asked. “And you assumed they were straight too, and that they were only with me?”

“Well,” Tucker was unbelievably uncomfortable with all of this.

“Polyamory.” Fran said. “And stop being a dick, would you? It’s not like he was trying to be rude. Not everyone is as open with their sexuality as you are, Olivia.”

“Hahah, yeah.” Olivia chuckled. “I was just fucking with you dude. I wasn’t trying to highroad you or anything.”

“You, I can handle. That one looks like he’s gonna eat me.” Tucker pointed to Gabe. “Does he eat people?”

“Probably.” Gabe shrugged.

“Don’t scare him.” Fran smacked Gabe.

“Anyways,” Olivia said loudly and slipped away from her boyfriends and closer to Tucker. “Why are you here? The official orientation starts in the main office and doesn’t include the lounges.” She was right. There were professors in the main office of each department to talk about the school, the major, and to help out with students who needed to find their way around.

“I got inside knowledge on this place, I knew this was where I wanted to be.” Tucker waved his hand towards the liquor closet. “Wasn’t expecting anyone to be here though.”

“Well I’m glad we met you.” Olivia said. “Gimme your number. We got to get a band together.”

“Give me your phone and I’ll put it in.” Tucker held out his hand. She slapped her phone down on his palm and he typed his info in.

“Great, I’ll text you later. Come on boys,” Olivia turned towards her boyfriends and ushered them out. “Gabby don’t take the vodka, that shits gross.”

Gabe frowned and put the bottle back in the closet, then followed her out with a bottle of scotch. He shot a grin at Tucker that definitely unnerved him, but he was starting to think that this guy might not be as scary as he looks. Maybe. Hopefully.

Once they left, Tucker claimed the vodka and a spot on the couch in the middle of the room. There was no TV in here like there was in most of the lounges. Instead there was a sound system set up. This room probably was meant to be used for mic nights, or maybe it was meant for students who were specifically trying to be musicians. It didn’t matter, they were going to use it now. Tucker really liked the sound of those open mic nights.

He didn’t even get the bottle open when his phone went off. 

Tucker pulled his phone out and checked the name of the person who had text him, expecting to see something from that strange girl. But instead, it was from Washington.

_Got a weird email about you. Apparently it’s very important you go to your political science orientation. Just passing on the message._

“God fucking… dad.” Tucker grumbled and opened his phone messenger. “Gotta control me even from Earth. Prick. I’m already doing your dumbfuck major.”

He typed a quick “k” as a response and then got up and left the room, leaving the vodka bottle on the ground because he didn’t care enough to put it away.

The political science department was on the other side of the ship, a full ten minute walk from where he was. He opened the door to the office with his passport and looked around at the others in his major. They looked kind of boring, honestly. 

Two of them were arguing politics. Class hadn’t even started yet and those two were arguing. It looked like anyone close to them was getting dragged in, too. Students were just beginning to crowd between the two.

“You’re being illogical, Vanessa.” The male student said with a pompous British accent.

“And you’re being unfair.” The girl, apparently named Kimball, snapped at him angrily. 

“Why would any government want rabble-rousers and miscreants to have power?”

“Oh right, name call Doyle. What kind of government would deny rights to the ones who built the fucking government?” 

“Students.” The two looked up from their debate about who knows what as a professor stood between them and scolded them. “This is no time for arguments. You’ll have plenty of time in class to debate your points and learn more about what is actually happening.” The professor stared at Vanessa as he said that last part. Doyle smiled smugly while she fumed at the implication that she was the one who needed to learn.

She turned on her heels and walked back into the crowd that formed behind her. Tucker looked between the two and decided to go to her.

“Hey, what was that?” He asked her.

“Just a spoiled brat who doesn’t understand society.” She said flatly.

Tucker turned his head, a bit lost. “Well that’s uh, pretty interesting.” He said. “Are we having an intro debate?” He joked, albeit awkwardly. Vanessa just rolled her eyes at him.

“I’m Tucker, poly-sci major and English minor.” Tucker held out his hand for her.

“I’m sorry if I’m not in the best mood for meeting new people, Tucker.” She pushed his hand away. “I just want to see where my rooms are.”

“Hey uh, I know the layout pretty well.”

“You do?” Vanessa put her hand on her hip and looked at Tucker skeptically. “Or do you just want to hit on me?”

“Me? Hit on you, after that whole thing? I got more class than that. I’ll hit on you another day.” Tucker smirked and posed nonchalantly. 

“Please don’t.”

“Oh fine.” He crossed his arms but grinned nonetheless. 

“And anyways,” Vanessa said. “We’re supposed to go to our classes by time slot. You know, like we’re high schoolers waiting to be spoon fed our point of view.”

“You don’t like school, do you?”

“I like the idea of school. I don’t have high hopes for how it’s going to be executed. But, I hope to be proved wrong.” She shrugged. “And if I’m proved right, I’ll make sure I get into a position to change things.”

“You’re kind of awesome.” Tucker said without thinking. “And that wasn’t me hitting on you, just so you know. You’re just, pretty fucking cool.”

Vanessa smiled dryly. “Thank you, but I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve that.”

“Hey, not yet.” Tucker told her. “But you sound like you’re going to end up doing something pretty important.”

Vanessa stared at him for a moment then started laughing, “You’re so bad at flirting.”

“What the fuck? You’re the second person to say that to me today and I’m not even flirting with you!”

“Whatever you say, Tucker.” She held her hand out for him to shake. “It was nice meeting you. I hope we have a class together so I can get to know you better.”

Tucker grinned and shook her hand. “You’re so into me.”

“Definitely not.”

“I’m hot.”

“That’s debatable.”

“You’re no fun.”

“I’ll give you that.” Vanessa smiled at him then glanced at the clock on the wall. “And now, we should probably get going. We have a college level high school orientation to get to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anybody who can tell where I took Olivia, Gabe, and Fran from gets to choose Locus's power when he gets introduced (I have no ideas for him because invisibility is taken and I don't want repeats)
> 
> and as always, I love comments! leave me something nice


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> have some Church and Tucker conversing and not being complete shits to each other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been gross and sick for the past week and I haven't gotten around to writing much during that time, so this is later than I wanted it to be and not quite the quality I wanted it to be, but I'm also kind of done with it so I'm uploading it.

It turned out that both Tucker and Vanessa were in the same introduction to modern colonial politics class. Not only that, but the boy who she was fighting with was in the class as well. They didn’t get a chance to rehash that fight. There was barely even enough time for Tucker to run over to Vanessa and relish in the fact that they were in the same class, but he was always good at making time for hot girls.

Technically, he was supposed to be going to his English orientation classes at the same time, coinciding with those time slots, but he didn’t. Tucker didn’t even want to go to this orientation, so he wasn’t going to bother with English. It’s not like they were mandatory.

After his last class orientations were finally finished he headed back to his dorm. Other students were hanging around in the rooms, talking to teachers and each other more closely than they were able to before. Tucker really didn’t care to do that. He had spent enough of today doing something for a man thousands upon thousands of miles away and he wasn’t going to spend another second doing it.

Church was sitting in his chair when Tucker got back. He was leaning back with his glasses pushed up on top of his head. Tucker’s first assumption would be that he was working on coding like he seemed to do way too often to be healthy, but instead his screen was open to a paused view of hulu. In front of that was his phone, which while he wasn’t looking at it Tucker got the feeling that he was waiting for some sort of a text.

“Hey.” Once Tucker walked into his room he was greeted by Church’s voice. He surprised not only by the sudden voice, but by just how non-confrontational it sounded. This guy was supposed to be an asshole “Why was it required for you to go to orientation?” He asked. Well, maybe he was still an asshole. That wasn’t a topic that Tucker really felt like talking about.

“I was,” Although, Tucker realized, there’s no reason for him to even know that. “Wait, how do you know that?” He demanded.

“The RA came in here looking for you.” Church explained.

“My dad is an asshole.” Tucker told him. “I’m sure he’s the one who wanted to make sure I did what I’m fucking supposed to.” He frowned and sat down on his bed. He looked at Church, who didn’t seem that interested in the conversation, expecting him to be an asshole about this.

“Your dad sounds awful.” Church said. That was a bit surprising. Tucker was expecting something more in the vein of insulting him, not his dad. “I know that feeling, though. My dad is probably just as fucking bad.” Church actually stopped typing on his computer as he talked. He turned to face Tucker like an actual person.

“Are you trying to be nice right now?” Tucker asked.

Church shrugged. “I don’t know, does insulting your dad and my dad in the same breath count as nice to you?”

“Eh,” Tucker shrugged as well. “Kind of.”

“Then I guess I’m being nice.” Church’s voice sounded kind, at least kinder than it usually was, but his face was still devoid of any real positive emotinos. “So, you wanna talk shit about your family? I’m all ears if you do.”

“Man, I thought you were a fucking asshole when I first met you.” Tucker said without really thinking. He likely would have said that even if he thought it through, but he liked to pretend he had some impulse control, especially went it came to not annoying people whose bad sides he really didn’t want to end up on. His roommate most definitely fell under this category if they had to be together for at least another two weeks, and if it was longer he hoped they could be friends.

“That doesn’t have jack shit to do with your family.” Church scoffed. Tucker released a breath he had no idea he even held. He wasn’t even offended at the comment. Maybe the asshole heard it a lot. He was, after all, an asshole.

“I was making a comment.” Tucker said.

“Well,” Church continued, “You’re going to learn pretty soon that I am most definitely an asshole. Doesn’t mean we can’t get along.”

“So what then, you’re an asshole but you want us to braid each other’s hair?”

“I am so regretting trying to be chill with you.” His roommate frowned. It gave off a default-setting vibe when he frowned.

“Ugh.” Tucker groaned and laid down on his bed. “Sorry. You’re a prick, but now I’m being a bigger one.”

“Yeah, you are.” Church turned his attention back to his computer and stared at the frozen picture.

“Hey so,” Tucker tried again, sitting up to actually look at his roommate. “Who was that one chick? That girl who shoved you off the rails on the first day?”

“Huh? Oh, her. That was Allison. She’s my girlfriend.”

“I don’t know what’s more amazing, the fact that you have a girlfriend or the fact that that’s your girlfriend.”

“Fuck off man, do you even have a girlfriend?”

Tucker frowned and plopped back down onto his back. “No. And all the hot girls I met today told me I was bad at flirting. I wasn’t even flirting with half of them!”

“Oh my god.” Church hit his table and started laughing. “You’re fucking ridiculous.”

“Well at least I’m not dating a bitch.”

“Hey!” Church snapped at him. “Only I can call her a bitch. Also my sister, but that’s only because she can beat me up.”

“I bet I could beat you up.” Tucker said. “I bet I could shove you in a fucking locker, because you look like a goddamn nerd. Can I call her a bitch?”

“I dunno dude, how attached are you to your computer?” Church lifted his hands and made a quick typing motion. “I’m pretty good at messing with tech.”

“All right. Point taken. Your hot girlfriend isn’t a bitch.” Tucker conceded, putting his hands up in defense.

“Much better.” Church smiled dryly. It looked a little weird, honestly. The guy didn’t look like a smile should ever be on his face. Not like he’s an asshole who deserve to be happy, he just has the saddest fucking eyes that Tucker has ever seen and he doesn’t even look capable of smiling. The smile was sarcastic, Tucker rationalized, so maybe that doesn’t count.

“Hey,” His roommate spoke up again. “You just got back, so you probably don’t know what happened to Simmons.”

“Uh, no. What happened to Simmons?” Tucker cocked his head to the side. This almost seemed too early in the school year for gossip like this to start. Not that he minded. Listening to the misfortune of others was always a good time.

Church actually completely turned around in his chair now. He looked a bit excited to be able to tell his story. “Okay so Simmons is in civil engineering or some shit, but apparently he overslept,”

Tucker leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. “I cannot buy that that dude would oversleep.”

“Have you met his roommate?” Oh right, that fat guy. “Fucking Grif probably did that to him. Anyways, so he missed his orientations and he just happened to have the one fucking teacher who actually takes this shit seriously and came down to look for him. I swear to god, this guy thinks he’s a military sergeant or something I don’t even know, it’s fucking ridiculous. But Simmons had already run out of his room to go to talk to his teachers after missing orientation, so Grif fucking pretended to be Simmons to his teacher.”

“Oh god, what happened?”

“The teacher assigned Simmons so much fucking work for the first week of class because Grif was being such an ass.”

“Does Simmons know?”

“Not yet. He’ll probably be back soon.”

Tucker laughed at the thought of Simmons finding out about this ordeal then suddenly thought again, “Dude. We’re going to be able to hear those two yelling from here.”

“Yeah, probably.” Church agreed. He was frowning again. That was definitely his default look. “But then that ornery RA can deal with them.” 

“Oh yeah. Man, I kind of feel bad for him.” Tucker admitted.

“Seriously? That dude just needs to loosen up. Maybe then he wouldn’t get mad so easily.” As he spoke he ran his hand through his short black hair.

“You’ve seen him one time, I don’t think that’s enough time to make a blanket statement like that.” Tucker said. It was a bit of hope though. That dude was cute, it would suck if he was going to be angry all the time.

Church scoffed, his chest heaving just a bit. He rolled his head to the side and stared at Tucker. “He’s friends with my sister. They went to college together.” He told Tucker. “She’s an apex too. She’s a grad student, though. I’m a junior. I don’t think I ever mentioned that.”

Tucker squinted his eyes a bit in exaggerated disbelief. “Washington has friends?”

That comment made Church tilt his head back and laugh. “I love that that’s what you take away from this conversation. Yeah, he has a couple of fucking friends. A number of apex’s from my sister’s college, actually. They’re all weird as shit though.”

Before Tucker could respond to that, not that he really had anything in mind for what to say, Church’s phone went off. His ringtone was obnoxious, Tucker thought it might be the theme song for some tv show. Church lifted up his head and looked down at the alert on his screen.

“That’s from my girlfriend. I got plans with her, so see ya.” He grabbed his desk and pull himself up and to his feet. He shoved a tablet into his bag and his phone into his pocket. Tucker thought it was weird that he didn’t bother to respond to his girlfriend, but he didn’t say anything about it. Church took his bag over his shoulder and left the room. Tucker gave him a wave as he left.

He was alone his room. 

It was kind of boring, but spending copious amounts of time alone was nothing that Tucker wasn’t already used to at this point in his life. So he took out his guitar and decided to give that a play. His fingers danced across the frets for the intro to his favorite song.

When Tucker was at home, he didn’t get to play his guitar nearly as often as he would have liked. Music had no place in the way of personal hobby for a successful man according to his dad. 

It felt nice to be free, even if he knew he really wasn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this was shorter than I wanted it to be, but still about the same length as most of my chapters so, shrug.
> 
> nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed.
> 
> next chapter you can enjoy some Simmons perspective!
> 
> and of course, I love comments. tell me if I messed anything up, too, cause I lost my notebook with this au's notes so now I need to decide my canon all over again


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simmons and Grif get to have their relationship take a step in the right direction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took a bit longer to finish than it should have, but it's done now

Simmons was a lot of things. First of all, he was tired. He had slept better than he had in a long time, but then it was too short and it left him feeling worse than ever. Second, he was anxious. That was nothing new. And finally, he was angry. Maybe angry wasn’t the right word. Livid. Yeah, livid. That sounded much more accurate. He was also currently hating his own power, but he decided to just forget about what he saw because it was obviously a sleep deprived mistake. So he focused his attention on his frustration towards his horrible roommate who made him sleep through his morning orientation. 

“Grif, what the hell?” His voice unfortunately squeaked a bit when he got really mad. His roommate definitely noticed this and smirked a bit. “You can’t just make me miss my classes!”

Grif shrugged, “Dude, it was an orientation. It’s not like you actually have to go to those. They’re optional for a reason.”

“I wanted to go!” He crossed his arms and glared at the other boy in the room, who wasn’t even bothering to make eye contact with him. 

“Well Jesus, I’m sorry.” Grif shrugged. “Oh and, one of your professors showed up here earlier. He left this for you.” He tossed a piece of paper towards Simmons. It didn’t really go very far, it just twisted in the air a bit then fell flat on the floor.

Simmons walked further into the room and grabbed it to read over it, his eyes widening as he did. “What did you do?” His voice was cracking again, but even through that the rage was evident and Grif settled himself a bit deeper into his spot on his bed.

“It’s not my fault your teacher is an asshole who also thought that I was you.” Grif laughed awkwardly. “Besides, you can probably go kiss his ass or something or just explain that you’re not me. It’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know that it will be!” Now Simmons’ face was turning red, he felt like any minute now he could shoot cartoon steam out of his ears.

“Right, don’t you?” Grif laughed.

“No, I don’t.” While it was true that Simmons could see the future, but it wasn’t like he had control over what he saw so he had no way of knowing how this situation with his teacher would pan out. He turned on the balls of his feet and stormed out the door, ignoring the questioning cry from his roommate. He had to find his professor and sort this whole thing out.

As the door shut behind him, he could have sworn he saw a look of regret on Grif’s face.

He tried not to like about it. 

Luckily for Simmons, his teacher was in his office. There wasn’t a nametag on his desk but Simmons remembered his schedule that his last name was “Sarge”, which was definitely an odd name but Simmons wasn’t about to question that. He did find himself wondering what Grif had to say about it, and he had a thought that whatever it was Grif said to him would have been funny if it wasn’t at his own expense. 

“Hello, um, sir. Sarge.” Simmons coughed, hoping to hide the awkwardness in his voice with well, with a different kind of awkwardness, the over polite and official kind of awkward that Simmons was great at. He shifted between from foot to foot and gripped the paper that Grif had handed him tightly and tried to will himself to calm down.

“What’s this? I don’t recognize you from orientation.” Sarge eyed Simmons carefully. “Are you here to force add? I didn’t know that was something we were doing, and I’m the head of the CE department. So, what is it?”

“I uh,” He stuttered and stared at his feet. He could feel his anxiety pressing against his chest and he really wished he had taken an extra dose of his medication before showing up here. Simmons felt like he was on the verge of a panic attack.

“Speak up, son.” The professor ordered. Simmons flinched, but quickly tried to collect himself.

He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “You left this with my roommate, sir.” Simmons held out the paper with Sarge’s instructions for extra work written on them. “I think there was a misunderstanding. My roommate pretended to be me, sir, and he’s not. I’m me, actually.”

Sarge looked at the paper and narrowed his eyes. “So you’re telling me the yellow-bellied smart ass I punished wasn’t one of my students?”

“That’s right, sir.” Technically, Sarge still punished Simmons who was definitely his student, but Simmons was not confident enough to really point that out to him.

“Hmph.” Sarge threw the piece of paper away. “Well, I guess it would be unfair to make you do all that.” Simmons let out a sigh of relief. “But,” He continued, “You still owe me a one page essay about why you shouldn’t let your roommate effect your professional life! It’s not his fault that you overslept and missed my orientation in the first place. It’s only his fault that he’s annoying.” 

“But that’s not my fault!” Simmons complained. “None of it is, it’s not even my fault I overslept, that was all him!”

“And how exactly do you think you can blame someone else for you sleeping?” Sarge raised an eyebrow and stared at his student.

“That’s his power, sir. He can make people fall asleep.” Simmons said quickly. “He did that, so I’d sleep in.”

Sarge stood up and slammed his hands down on his desk loudly, making Simmons flinch yet again. “So your roommate is breaking one of the fundamental rules of this establishment by using his powers on you?”

“Yes, sir.” He stammered. 

His professor nodded and stood up. “In that case, maybe I should have another talk with him.” Sarge walked towards the door and Simmons followed behind him nervously. 

“Is he, is he going to be in trouble?” If Grif got in enough trouble, he might not have to worry about that vision he had earlier. Simmons did remember reading about a section of the school roped off for delinquent students to prevent them from ruining the experience of everyone else.

“Of course he is!” Sarge told him. “An Apex using his power on another student is one of the worst things you can do here!”

Simmons nodded, that was certainly true, and followed behind his professor as he made his way over to Simmons’ and Grif’s dorm room. 

Sarge typed something into the door panel – he didn’t even need to ask Simmons to open it. It was a different code than the one that Simmons or Grif had to use to get in. Staff must have their own codes to override passcodes so they can get everywhere without memorizing hundreds of number sequences. 

Inside the room, Simmons wasn’t even completely positive that it was the right room. It was clean. Everything was picked up and Grif was standing over a pile of folded shirts counting to three over and over again under his breath. He looked up when he heard the two newcomers walk inside the room. The expression on his face was one that Simmons was accustomed to – panicked. 

“You have to go.” Grif insisted. “I’m not done cleaning. I haven’t even waxed the floors,”

“This is a lot bigger than your stupid floor.” Sarge told him.

Grif clutched his desk and took a deep breath, then another one, and another one. His face seemed to change and his energy was back to being the way Simmons had always seen him before now.

“Mr. Simmons here tells me you not only impersonated him, but used your power on him. Is this true?”

Grif looked between Sarge and Simmons and slouched a bit. “Yeah, I – ”

“I made it up.” Simmons said suddenly. “I made the whole thing up to get out of getting in trouble myself.” He moved so that he was standing between Sarge and his roommate. “I slept through your orientation, and I’m terribly sorry. I thought I could get out of trouble by blaming my roommate, but I took it too far. He didn’t do anything.”

Sarge frowned and crossed his arms. “You can bet you’re going to get in quite a bit of trouble for this, Simmons. You’ll think that work I gave your roommate by mistake was getting of easy!” He turned and stormed out.

Simmons buried his face in his hands and sat down on his bed. “I can’t believe that happened.”

Grif stared at Simmons, like he was contemplating getting up and moving over to him. “Dude, you totally took the fall for me.”

“Whatever punishment I get for lying about lying isn’t as bad as what you’d get for what you did.” Simmons grumbled. “Even though you definitely deserve to get punished.” He looked around the room. There was a broom in the corner. Grif had even swept the floor. That didn’t even make sense to do, they hadn’t been here long enough for the floors to be dirty. On top of that, Grif didn’t seem much like the type to clean. He didn’t clean, he hadn’t cleaned anything until right now. Their dorm was a horrible mess, but now Grif did something nice for some reason. 

He was still thinking of that panicked look on Grif’s face when he first walked in the room. It felt too familiar to just let it go, to just let something else happen to make Grif panic. 

“So, why’d you do it then?” Grif asked, interrupting his train of thought.

“I don’t know.” Simmons threw his hands in the air. “I have no fucking clue why I lied to him! You’re an asshole and I hate you. Why the hell did you clean up after yourself? That makes no sense.”

Grif shrugged. “Eh, I felt kind of bad.”

“You…did?” Simmons said slowly. 

“Yeah, I fucking felt bad. Is that so wrong? I thought hey, I ruined this dude’s day, maybe I should try to do something to make it slightly better!”

“I’m just surprised! You really don’t seem like the kind of guy to do that!”

“You barely even know me.” Grif told him.

“You haven’t been behaving in a way that would make me think you’re either a, more than you seem, or b, worth knowing even the slightest bit.” Simmons snapped at him. “At least, until now. So,”

“Looks like you were wrong, then.” Grif grinned.

Simmons studied Grif’s expression, then nodded. “Maybe I was.” He glanced around the room again. “By the way, how did you, y’know, do all this so quickly?” He motioned to the cleanliness surrounding them.

“It’s not hard to get things done properly, it’s just not fun.” Grif shrugged. “I have to turn off my power,” He lifted his hand and made a motion like flipping off a switch, “and let my…” He trailed off and stared at Simmons, like he was waiting for a cue for him to hide the next part or to continue. Simmons must have given the right one, because he continued to talk. “Let my OCD take over.” He admitted.

“You have OCD?” That was definitely some shocking news. He didn’t really seem like it, then again, that would explain the look on his face when Simmons had first walked in on him cleaning. It would also explain the counting under his breath.

“Yeah, pretty bad I just use my relaxing thing on myself to keep it under control. Way cheaper than medication.”

Simmons ran his fingers through his hair and looked anywhere but at Grif. He definitely felt at least a little guilty for misjudging Grif. Maybe it was slightly more acceptable, knowing that Grif acted the way he did as a coping mechanism. 

“You know, maybe you could just, take your relaxation down a notch.” Simmons suggested. “I really can’t handle you being at maximum laziness in here.”

“That’s fair.” Grif conceded. He stood up and walked over to Simmons, holding out his hand. “Hey, maybe we should start over. I’m Dexter Grif. What’s your name?”

A wave of relief hit Simmons as he took Grif’s hand, and he smiled, knowing this feeling wasn’t being made by Grif’s power.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! if you like it, tell me! I love comments


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